Coffee With Jeff

The year was 1890. A 49 year old artist and inventor named Louis Le Prince was about to become world famous for his invention. He boarded a train in Dijon France on the way to Paris.

He never arrived and no one ever found out what happened. This is the story of Louis Le Prince!

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Back in the early days of gasoline-powered automobiles, engines had a problem with knocking. The answer – or so the oil companies thought – was to mix highly toxic lead into the gas! This poison came out through the exhaust and into the air, the very same air that kids breathe … And this went on for over 60 years!

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On the 20th of December 1900, the lighthouse tender Hesperus approached the Flannan Isles with supplies for the lighthouse. When they approached, they new something was wrong. There were no signs of the three-man crew. The island was search. The men were gone and they were never seen again. This is the story of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse mystery.

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He was born Jefferson Randolph Smith II in Newnan, Georgia, on November 2, 1860 and he would be known as Soapy, on of the most notorious con men in the old west. From the Shell Game and Three-card Monte to a fake telegraph and investments, if there was a way to take advantage of people, Soapy was involved. Today I tell his story!

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Two story for the price of one! First, the story of Bridget Driscoll, the first pedestrian killed by a automobile, and second, the story of one of the worse animated films ever made, Foodfight!

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On September 12, 1952 in the little village of Flatwoods, West Virginia, a group of seven, two adults and five children, investigated something that had crash or landed on a hill. In the darkness, with only a flashlight that came across something scared them and they never forgot. What was it? Today I tell the tale of the Flatwoods Monster!

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Canadian Dr. Gerald Bull had a lifelong dream to build a Super Gun, one that could shoot scientific instrument into outer space. It began in 1961, and for almost 30 years he tried to make his dream come true. In 1990, it looked as if he might actually build it but it was for the wrong people.

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Three short tales on today’s show. The first is about a C.I.A. program to use kittens as spying devices. Next the story of Smokey Bear, and we finish that up with a ship the public wanted to call Boaty McBoatface!

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In 1848, a worker of John Sutter found gold in California. Sutter had reason for wanting to keep the find quiet, but he didn’t count on Samuel Brannan, who was soon running down the street yelling “Gold! Gold on the American River!”

Brannan, a former Mormon, businessman and journalist, wasn’t crazy – and had no desire to look for the valuable mineral – but he knew that a mad rush of fortune hunters was his key to fame and fortune. He would become California’s first millionaire, only to die poor and in relative obscurity.

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On August 16, 1942, a blimp carrying two men left the coast of San Francisco to look for, and possibly destroy, enemy submarines. Five hours later, the airship was found, crashed in the middle of a suburban street. The two navy men were gone.

To this day, no one knows what became of the two men, leading some to call the mysterious airship… The Ghost Blimp.

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